Can we bridge Society-Scholarship disconnect?

If the Vocation Lectures were only a fragment of Weber’s thought, than Weber thought of tons of things. The lectures not only covered the vocations themselves, but offered insights into both professions, and what the two professions do for society. Ultimately, Weber concludes both professions are meaningless unless the professional gives them proper context.
The lecture that fascinated me the most was the lecture on “science”, which I prefer to call scholarship. Scholarship, as Weber notes, is an inefficient process. No one truly knows when information is truly needed, but only that it will be used one day. Here, there is a disconnect between knowledge and the real world, leaving most people confused about how knowledge applies. Far from the Platonic idea of science as blessed sunlight, Weber says knowledge confuses, and just leads to more questions.
So what is the use of scholarship? Is it worthwhile to fund such an inefficient enterprise? Scholarship cannot survive without government funding or philanthropy (or students’ very generous contributions). As scholarship increases, it will seem more mystical to society, as it will have only a few direct applications. Why?

Nietszche=Whoa!

Philosophy is pretty dry. Educated men (fewer women) write down funny ideas that may or may not bear any relation to reality. Sometimes, philosophy has a prescriptive element, such as Thomas Hobbes’s call for a strong sovereign. Often, though, philosophy describes the world as is. Immanuel Kant had a largely descriptive philosophy, and one that does not have immediate interest.
Friedrich Nietszche’s philosophy is not dry at all. In fact, it is jarring, deeply symbolic, and made me a tad uncomfortable. One could read it as the ramblings of a crazy anti-Christian, and would be right. But if one looks even deeper, he sees a philosopher prepared to question everything that came before him. He not only questions our Judeo-Christian values, but how we construct our values in the first place. What do our values help us avoid? How did we come to those values?
To explain Nietszche’s philosophy is a waste of time, for I can do him no justice. What I can do is note the stylistic differences between Nietszche and all other philosophers. Unlike most philosophical texts, Nietszche’s book is deeply personal, and uses metaphors and literary devices freely. Nietszche makes huge empirical claims, such as his version of community formation in the middle of his second essay.
One other thing to note is that Nietszche’s three essays attack the same question from three different angles. Each is a criticism of traditional morality on three different fronts, leaving me confused where one distinction ends and the other begins. One thing for certain, though, is that Nietszche’s thought is so rich and consistent that it deserves time for contemplation.

Nature in Hegel and Kant

Hegel would classify Kant's view of nature driven history as a type of universal history. It would be accurate that Kant's history reveals just as much, if not more, about his own philosophical framework than what may have actually happened. In fact Hegel's idea of the Rational Spirit is related to Kant's idea of Nature. Except is more representative and explained, and does not reference as much back to being the unknowable space (i.e. an effective god figure), but rather something more a renewing and renewable (but knowable) part of the world. Hegel's nature in fact is in opposition to overall progress through a cyclic history and is opposed by the Rational Spirit . Hence Kant's nature is more comparable to Hegel's Rational Spirit than Hegel's nature through its control.

Hegel and His View on Living History

Like Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel sees human history as a story of progression, moving towards a final goal of ultimate freedom. Unlike Kant, Hegel examines the political sphere in far greater detail than Kant does. In fact, Hegel uses the political as the starting point, using macrosocial forces (zeitgeist) to explain the progression of society.

Hegel’s view of zeitgeist explains his philosophical outlook to history, and why he sees it as fundamental to human development. Several of the philosophers we have seen use history to their own ends, mostly in the form of “states of nature.” Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau each form a state of nature, formulated on little more than their own ideas. Hegel uses an actual narrative to reflect on history, and what he sees as the larger, social developments.

What are those developments, you may ask? The answer is one I am not entirely sure of. What I can say, with certainty, is that Hegel feels history tracks the progress of a society, and that a society remains in stasis without it. The most vivid example to me is Hegel’s view on India, a culturally rich society that maintains no codified history. As Hegel explains on pages 65 and 66, the Indians have a self-conception, but have not narrowed it down because they do not have a proper view of themselves.

What I do find disturbing is that he views Protestant Germanic society as the pinnacle of human progress. While I (a staunch Catholic) do feel the Protestant ethos has helped Western society flesh its views of individualism, I nonetheless find Hegel’s attitudes towards other societies as dangerous, bordering on racist. I just feel that Hegel’s views may lay the framework for a German superiority complex, which can help justify all sorts of nastiness over the next century (German imperialism and Naziism come to mind).

The Progression of Society

Kant's view of nature and its role is very different than what comes before, in my understanding of it. In the idea that nature is inherent in us as a species and is a driving force in how the human race is shaped throughout time. This deterministic, and almost predestined view of human history/future (we may not get to a state of peace or concord between nations on the first try, but eventually it will happen) seems strongly rooted in a Calvinistic or at least Protestant view of predestination.
Interestingly, he does not seem optimistic about the fact that eventually nations will learn to work together despite his reasoning that it must occur. I thought that there may be two reasons for this: (1) He believes that it will be so far in the future that there is no use for him to think about it as he won't be around anymore, nor would he have expected it to occur in a few hundred years; (2) Staying at a position of formal relations between nations and cooperation between them may be difficult and the moral aspects may not be easily maintained either.

One thing that struck me as being, as far as I am aware, relativity new thinking was the idea that the even the politics of one state should not be interfered with by others. Although this likely has its roots in ideas coming out of the Peace of Westphalia and ideas for sovereignty, the way it was stated and laid out also made it clear that Gene Roddenberry must have been in some ways a Kantian.

Questioning Kant's Good, and the Means to this Good

I managed to get an interview with Immanuel Kant this week. Kant telephoned me from his bunk bed in heaven. Many thanks to the angels who contributed countless hours to translate Kant’s dialogue from his own private language.

Thomas Hamed: So can you sum up your political philosophy in three sentences?
Immanuel Kant: No

TH: Can I?
IK: Probably not without making false assumptions of my statements.

TH: Well, based on my reading of Perpetual Peace and Theory and Practice, I have come up with three statements:

1. Man uses morality to transcend his animalistic nature, and gains greater moral insight as time goes on.
2. A good government is one where the people’s morality aligns with the rulers’, and all understand and execute their duties.
3. Nations should federate to foster peace and understanding between each other, especially when those nations meet conditions in #2.

Am I right?

IK: You are (woefully) incomplete, inbreeding my philosophy with your own views by removing key qualifications I make throughout my work. Have you read my Critique of Pure Reason, Critique on Practical Reason, and the other thousands of pages I have penned? They give you a much fuller account of how I expect man to transcend his brutish nature, and how he must achieve it.

TH: I am sure they are enlightening. I want to ask you a few questions about the premises of your first statement.
IK: If you wish.

TH: From what I have read, you describe well how man can transcend, and why he may wish to transcend himself. Yet the very word “transcend” implies he is going somewhere he knows little about, possibly even this state’s existence. Comment on that.
IK: Man may not know consciously, but does know through his limited perception of time.

TH: Let’s accept that notion of time [it will take a semester to discuss this]. What’s the good man is moving towards?
IK: Harmony, for one thing. Moral harmony, to be precise. Peace is also a goal, as the more peace one has, the happier he is.

TH: And so you regard peace as a good in itself?
IK: Yes.

TH: Is peace “good” enough that it requires moral concord within a state?
IK: Undoubtedly.

Here, the translators quit work. I am a skeptic of Kant’s philosophy, as it assumes there is an objective “good”, and that the methods towards this good are just. I feel that Kant’s philosophy paints humanity with a broad brush stroke, and may loose the very diversity he defends in Perpetual Peace. Furthermore, I find disturbing his defense of individual duty towards a state. While duty is necessary for the orderly workings of a state, I remain unconvinced that it fosters a state’s moral advancement.

Society and the Indivdual justice

One argument of his that I find interesting is that in justice, even if a few cases do not seem to be the most fair thing (do to extenuating circumstances, etc.), that in no way implies that it is not the right to follow the same lines of justice. While he does still often hold he individual as a basic unit, this is particularly society oriented, as Hume believes that without the maintenance of the same rules of justice even in cases where they don't seem to fit is essential to the maintenance of order and society. And although Hume's belief in a "state of nature" is purely as a theoretical background, he believes that any society would be better than none. He thus brings the individual priority back in in the English tradition.